GERMAN FILM COMPETES FOR OSCAR

DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN (THE LIVES OF OTHERS)

By Johannes Wetzel

PARIS, 23 FEBRUARY 2007
â€”The Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 2006 will be awarded on February 25th,
and the winner just might be Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives
of Others
) This
German film on the Stasi (the secret police in the former East
Germany), has already won numerous German and European film awards.

Released in the U.S. in February, Das Leben der Anderen is a
very well-made film with an outstanding cast. Despite its unusual length
(2:17) and fairly conventional direction, an atmosphere of suspense is
sustained throughout.

German critics have stressed that Das Leben der Anderen is one
of the rare films that deal seriously with the second dictatorship to take
hold in Germany in the twentieth century. Among the other films that treat
the subject, some are close to documentaries: like Das
Ministerium fĂĽr Staatssicherheit: Alltag einer BehĂ¶rde (2002) by Jan
Lorenzen and Christian Klemke, and Aus Liebe zum Volk (2003) by
Eyal Sivan and Audrey Maurion. Others, such as Connie Walthers'
Feuer und Flamme (2001), are clearly fictional. But Das Leben
der Anderen is the first to gain such a large audience, or to
be so praised by a majority of critics:

It seems that the time has now come when the GDR can be considered as
more than a mere curiosityâ€”a place where narrow minded people drove plastic
cars and ate Spreewald gherkins , as shown inGood Bye
Lenin (2003) or Sonnenallee (1999). There are hilarious
moments, such as a Stasi typewriter expert explaining blandly to his
superior why he can't identify a typewriter used by an opponent of the
regime (under which all typewriters had to be registered by their
owners). But on the whole, the film is set in opposition to
the current impluse to Ostalgie (the
nostalgic look backwards on the old East Germany), and especially the
attempts of former Stasi officers to downplay the brutality of the regime
.

Ulrich Muhe as Captain Gerd Wiesler in The Lives of
OthersPhoto courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Although Das Leben der Anderen was directed by a West German
first-time filmmaker, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, some of the
highest authorities on life in the GDR feel that this film got it
right. Wolf Biermann, the most famous opponent to the regime who was
exiled in 1974, acclaimed it "a realistic portrait of GDR". "Unbelievebaly
authentic", says Thomas Brussig, author and scriptwriter born in the GDR.
Joachim Gauck and Marianne Birthler, former victims of Stasi persecution
and now directors of the administration in charge of the Stasi legacy,
"recommend" the picture: "Thatâ€™s how it was", they say.

The acclaim was not, however, unalloyed. All reviewers had to
acknowledge that the story told in this picture is unfortunately a
fairy-tale and not a fine example of heroic resistance to the regime. The
director of the Stasi-Museum located in the former HohenschĂ¶nhausen
prison, laments the film's "careless" way of dealing with the past. The
Stasi officer (Ulrich MĂĽhe) , assigned to keep under surveillance
the couple of a celebrated actress (Martina Gedeck) and a famous
playwright (Sebastian Koch), changes sides. He rescues the writer from
serious trouble and pays for that by being demoted. Such events not only
never happened, but never could have happened, given the severe control
mechanisms of the Stasi. Worse: This plot turns the perpetrator into a
victim. This falsification of history rightly shocked some of those who
had suffered at the hands of the secret police.

Sebastian
Koch and Martina Gedeck in The Lives of OthersPhoto courtesy
of Sony Pictures Classics

After German reunification, the playwright, as thousands of former
GDR-citizens did, reads the records the Stasi had compiled on him, and
discovers the truth: who saved him (the officer) and who betrayed him (his
own wife). To his guardian angel he dedicated his new book. Its title:
Ballad of the Good Human. This redemption of the devil is
hard to accept for many of the regime's victims, such as the 16,000 men
and women to whom German politicians recently granted a 250-euro monthly
pension for spending six months or more in jail for political reasons.
This film intends reconciliation. But eighteen years after the wall came
down, Germany is only at the beginning of working through its past.

Ulrich Muhe and
Ulrich Tukur in
The Lives of OthersPhoto courtesy of Sony Pictures
Classics

And why, after all, does this Stasi-officer change from Saul to
Paul? Once again, the plot reduces the political problem to a
sentimental one. The officer, shown as living alone in a sad greyish flat
relieved only by the visit of a government-owned prostitute, witnesses the
far more exciting "lives of others" and is moved by the contrast. Maybe he
simply falls in love with the beautifull actress. Maybe he is moved by the
writers grief upon learning of the suicide of a a fellow director, banned
from working for years by the regime. Or maybe he just disapproves the
observation when he realizes that its purpose is to eliminate the
playwright simply because the minister of culture lusts after his wife.
But whatever the reason, he does not evolve into a political opponent to
a dictatorship with no respect for democracy, justice and human rights.

When he explains the genesis of his film, Florian Henckel von
Donnersmarck cites a quote from Lenin. As he recalls it: "I shouldnâ€™t
listen to Beethoven's Appassionata piano sonata too often.
Otherwise, I feel like petting childrenâ€™s heads and will never finish my
revolution." Unfortunately for us all, the Appassionata never did
change history.

Johannes Wetzel is
a German journalist and culture critic. Based in Paris, he contributes to the
Berliner Zeitung, Die Welt, and Stuttgarter
Zeitung.